


Pitching Tents

by jeeno2



Series: Short Stories From the Vortex [21]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Awkward Boners, Bears, Camping, F/M, Fluff, Meddling TARDIS, Nudity, Sharing a Bed, Silly, Spatulas, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:57:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8043427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: The Doctor and Rose go camping in the woods.  Hijinks ensue.





	1. A-Camping We Will Go!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goingtothetardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingtothetardis/gifts).



> Written for the wonderful, amazing mountaingirlheidi on the anniversary of her birth. She recently prompted me with: "Because I'm curious about what else you can write involving an object from the kitchen, how about Ten and Rose, a tent, a spatula, and some naked adventures (does not have to be sexual)." That brilliant prompt begat this very silly four-part story, which I hope she enjoys.
> 
> I hope your birthday was incredible, dear. <3
> 
> (***Apologies for the repost. I had some serious technical difficulties the first time I attempted to add this to AO3 and ultimately had to take it down.)

“Aha!” the Doctor exclaims, enthusiastically throwing open the door to the TARDIS.  “Here we are, Rose. The Olympic Peninsula.  The northwestern-most point in the contiguous United States and, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful.”

Rose pokes her head outside and looks around at the forest surrounding them.  After taking in the beautiful scenery for a long moment she closes her eyes, breathing deeply.

“Oh, Doctor,” she says reverently.  “All these trees…” She cranes her neck a little and gasps when she sees the ragged coastline just a short distance away.  “Is that… is that the Pacific Ocean?”

He nods.  “It is.”

She beams at his confirmation.  “As a kid I had this picture book about it, you know.  The Pacific.  Never thought I’d get the chance to actually see it in person though.”  She shakes her head, not taking her eyes off the water.  “It’s absolutely gorgeous, Doctor.  All of this.”

“Mmm,” the Doctor agrees.  “There’s nothing quite like this little corner of Earth anywhere else in this solar system.”

Rose wastes no time, quickly pulling on a lightweight pink jacket and heading outside so she can explore the small clearing they landed in.  It was quite a feat, really – landing the TARDIS right in the dead center of the little campsite the Doctor reserved for them two weeks ago. 

He’s more than a little proud of himself for having pulled it off successfully. 

It’s a chilly morning here in northwest Washington State.  Chillier than the Doctor had anticipated, in fact, if the wispy clouds of steam that come with Rose’s every breath are any indication.  She walks slowly around the campsite, rubbing at her arms a little to warm herself.  She checks out the crude fire pit in the far corner of the clearing, giving the stones surrounding it a gentle, contemplative kick with the toe of her trainers. 

Rose is still smiling when she gets to the wooden post marking the westernmost border of their campsite.  But a moment later her smile falters as she begins to read the notice tacked to it.

By the time she’s finished reading she’s frowning.

“What is it?” the Doctor calls out.  He walks over to her, confused by her sudden change in mood.  “What’s the matter?”

“Doctor,” Rose says, turning to face him.  She jabs her thumb over her shoulder at the wooden post bearing the notice.  “This says we’ve landed in a campsite.”

The Doctor smiles.  “Does it?   Brilliant!  I was right, then, about having got the landing right.”

Rose turns to look at him.  “A campsite?  As in, a place where people… _camp_?  Sleep outside, I mean?”  Rose shakes her head at him and gestures incredulously to the clearing they’re standing in.   “You don’t really mean for us to sleep out here tonight, do you?”  

The Doctor nods.  “Yep!” he exclaims, popping the _p_.  He’s so full of excitement and pent up energy he begins rapidly bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.  “I do.”

Rose looks mildly horrified.  “But… but why?  It’s pretty here and all, but our beds on the TARDIS are super comfy.”  A brisk wind kicks up suddenly and she shivers, rubbing at her arms again.  “Not to mention warm.” 

“But Rose,” the Doctor says.  He tries not to sound petulant but mostly fails.  “I told you we were camping tonight.  You sounded excited, earlier.”

“What?  No!” she insists.  “You never said we were gonna be sleeping outside.”  She puts her hands on her hips.  “All you said was we were gonna visit a beautiful forest, go on some hikes, and make s’mores.”

“Yes.  I did.  S’mores,” the Doctor agrees.  “And you can’t make proper s’mores if you aren’t camping, Rose.”  He shakes his head.  “It’s the only way.  Everybody knows that.”

“That’s not true,” Rose says.  “Back on the Estate my mum and I used to make them over stove burners in the kitchen.”

The Doctor wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“For the sake of our friendship, Rose, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” he says.  “But either way, I really don’t understand what the problem is.  You’ve slept in loads of horrid places before.  Places that are far worse than a comfortable tent in a lovely setting, I might add.”  He thinks back to the last time they were forced to spend the night together in a filthy alien dungeon.  Rose had hardly complained at all.  “You’ve spent the night on rickety cots before.  On cold, hard, concrete floors.”

She waves her hand dismissively.  “I have, yes.  But never by choice, and _never_ when my warm and comfy bed is right next door.”

The Doctor swallows.  She’s got him there.

He sighs, deciding on the spot that he’s not above begging.  “Just…  I dunno, Rose.  Could you give it a try?  Please?  For me?”  He begins to pout, his unhappy mood causing his lower lip to jut out reflexively.  Rose’s eyes dart down to his mouth very quickly before flitting back up to his eyes. 

“You… you want me to try it?” she stammers, suddenly sounding bit unfocused.

 _Huh.  That’s odd_ , the Doctor thinks, then shakes it off.  There are more important matters at hand.

He nods.  “Sleeping out under the stars is brilliant, Rose.  It’s just brilliant.   And it’s been so long since I’ve done it.”  He rubs at the back of his neck, not wanting to admit to her that he’s been dying to sleep out under the stars with her, specifically, for months now.  The very thought of it – of lying on their backs together, all snuggled up in warm blankets, watching constellations race across the sky – sends his hearts racing.  “Please just try it once?  If you hate it after the first night we can go right back to the TARDIS first thing in the morning.  Promise.”

Rose says nothing for a very long moment.  Eventually, however, she closes her eyes and lets out a put-upon sigh.  “Fine,” she says.  “I’ll try it.”   

The Doctor’s pout turns into a beatific grin.  “Brilliant!” he says.  “I’ll go get the marshmallows.”

He hurries off into the TARDIS to get all the supplies they’ll need for their dinner, going as quickly as he can so he can make it back before Rose changes her mind.


	2. Whales and Meddling Wing-ships

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get seriously tropey here. But I promised you foolishness, so, yeah. ;)

Much to the Doctor’s delight, Rose quickly warms to the idea of camping.

Or, at least, once they set out on their meandering coastal hike she quickly becomes so enthralled with the unique beauty of their surroundings she doesn’t voice any additional complaints about what she’s agreed to try.

The Doctor decides to view that as a success.

About two miles into their hike – a relatively flat, looping trail the Doctor has always liked because of its stunning panoramic views – Rose stops dead in her tracks.  The Doctor, suddenly concerned that perhaps she hasn’t had a change of heart about camping after all, is about to ask what’s wrong.  But before he can say anything Rose points excitedly towards the water.

He looks in the direction of her outstretched finger.  And he smiles when he realizes what’s caught her attention.

About a half-mile off the coast, just barely visible from this height, is a pod of gray whales in the midst of their annual migration.  A moment after Rose points them out the largest whale in the pod – the matriarch, the Doctor suspects – leaps high into the air.   An enormous plume of sea spray shoots out from the whale’s blow hole just before she dives back down, making Rose clap her hands in delight.

And then the whales are gone.

 _Eschritius robustus,_ the Doctor thinks to himself, marveling at their luck.  _Such majesty and_ grace.  He’s never seen these whales’ equal – in size, in intelligence; in any of the metrics that matter – anywhere else in the universe.  They leave the Doctor utterly, reverently speechless every time he sees them.

They stand together in silence for a very long moment after that, neither one of them wanting to disturb the beauty of what they’ve just witnessed by speaking.

At length, the Doctor clears his throat.  “So,” he says.   “What do you think?” 

Rose doesn’t answer him right away.  She simply takes his hand in hers and flashes him a dazzling smile that would outshine any star. 

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she says, still smiling, the sunlight reflected in her eyes. 

* * *

 

“Shall we set up the tent, Doctor?” Rose asks some time later, back at the campsite at the end of one of the best days the Doctor has had in lifetimes. 

It’s dusk now, and they’ve just finished their very authentic camping dinner of franks, beans, and gooey s’mores.  Rose is idly twirling her marshmallow roasting stick in her right hand and smiling at him.  The day has been full of smiles.  A small crumbly piece of Rose’s sticky dessert is smudged along one corner of her mouth, a detail the Doctor finds incredibly distracting. 

Before he can stop himself from doing it he wonders if she would taste sweet if he kissed it away.

“Doctor!” Rose shouts, snapping her fingers in front of his face.

“Erm.  What?” The Doctor bolts upright in his camping chair as he realizes, too late, that he’s having an inappropriate daydream.  Again.  The day’s been full of those as well. 

“The tent, Doctor,” Rose says.  Her grin broadens, as though somehow she knows what he was just thinking about.  As if to prove it her tongue darts out and touches the corner of her mouth, absently licking away the errant crumbs.   At the sight of it the Doctor’s hands clench involuntarily around his own roasting stick. 

“The… tent,” the Doctor repeats stupidly.

“Right.  The tent.”  Her smile falters a little.  “The thing you want us to sleep in tonight.  It’s getting dark, yeah?”  Rose stands up from her camp chair and stretches, reaching her arms up over her head and leaning backward to work out the kinks.  “I don’t fancy setting it up in the dark, do you?”

“Oh!” the Doctor says, eyes wide.  He claps a hand to his forehead.  “Right.  Yes.  The tent!”  He’s been having such a brilliant time today he’d nearly forgotten about setting up tonight’s accommodations.  He stands up and heads for the TARDIS.  “Wait right here.  I’ll get what we need.”

The Doctor hurries to the second floor of the wardrobe room, where the TARDIS stores most of the things he only has use for once in a very great while.  He digs past feather boas and faded leopard-print rugs to the very back of the room, where there are a small assortment of tents and sleeping bags for him to choose from.  The TARDIS nudges him towards the tent in the middle of the lot and the two sleeping bags to the right of it.

“Thanks, old girl,” the Doctor says quietly, stopping a moment to caress one of her coral struts in gratitude.  She hums appreciatively in response.  Smiling again, and with visions of Rose sleeping next to him under the stars dancing in his head, the Doctor quickly pats down the bag carrying the tent to make certain all the poles and other assembly equipment are still inside.  Once he’s satisfied everything’s accounted for the Doctor hoists the tent over one shoulder and the sleeping bags over the other.

He walks briskly back to where Rose waits for him.  When she sees him emerge from the TARDIS with their gear she averts her eyes, looking a bit more nervous than she’d been earlier.

“I’ve never slept in a tent before,” she says shyly.  Her cheeks go a bit pink at the admission.  “You sure this’ll be fun?”

He nods.

“Oh, Rose,” he says.  “It’ll be brilliant.  Just you wait.”

* * *

 

But once he’s gotten the tent assembled the Doctor immediately realizes he couldn’t have been more wrong about that.

“Oh, no,” he says, eyes wide in horror as he regards the fully-assembled tent the TARDIS picked for them.  The ridiculously _small_ tent the TARDIS picked for them.  “No, no, no.”  He buries his head in his hands and groans.

Rose frowns and moves to stand behind him. “Doctor?” she asks, sounding concerned.  “What’s wrong?”

The Doctor runs his hands through his hair, so agitated by this turn of events he can’t even look her in the eye as he answers her.

“The… um.  The tent.”  He inclines his head towards it.  “The tent the TARDIS gave us is too small.”

Rose raises an eyebrow at him questioningly.  “Too small?”

“Mmm,” the Doctor confirms.  “Much too small, in fact.”

On the bright side, this particular tent is quite structurally sound.  Even if their campsite receives the sort of rainfall this part of the world is famous for he and Rose should remain perfectly dry inside.  But that bit of good news is dwarfed by the tent’s very obvious downside.  Specifically:  this tent the TARDIS had him take was clearly designed for just one person.  Or perhaps for two people who are incredibly fond of one another to share.  Either way, it was definitely _not_ intended for a Time Lord and the dead sexy, much younger female companion for whom said Time Lord frequently harbors wildly inappropriate and lustful thoughts.

Rose regards the tent for a long moment and then looks at him.  Her expression unreadable.  “It’s not… you know.  Bigger on the inside, or something?”

The Doctor sighs miserably and shakes his head.  “No.  Go on, have a look for yourself.”

He watches as Rose gets down on her hands and knees and crawls cat-like into the little tent.  The jeans she’s wearing are rather form-fitting and hug her bum gorgeously, and the Doctor has to force himself to look away as she wriggles her way into the too-tight space.  The too-tight space that the TARDIS, damn her, apparently intends for him to share with Rose tonight.

When the Doctor imagined this trip he pictured the tent they’d sleep in would be roomy enough for them to easily sleep next to each other with no risk whatsoever of accidental – and dangerous – touching in the night.  So much for that plan.

“Can’t we just… y’know.  Get a bigger one?  From the wardrobe room?” Rose asks.  She’s lying on her stomach inside the tent now, her elbows propped up and her chin in her hands. Her face is strangely blank of expression.  What the Doctor wouldn’t give to know what she’s thinking right now.

He shakes his head.  “I tried that,” the Doctor says.  “Just before you came over.  But the TARDIS just laughed at me and said none of the other tents are suitable.”  He swallows, and closes his eyes. “When I pressed her on it she laughed again.  After that she stopped talking to me.”

Rose’s eyes go wide.  “Do the other tents all have holes in the roofs or something?”

“Err.  Something like that.”  He closes his eyes again.   “Rose, I’m sorry.  We don’t have to – I mean, you can just… you know.  Sleep in your bed.  On the TARDIS.  If you want.  You don’t have to do this.” 

To his great surprise Rose starts to giggle a little.

“It’s fine, Doctor,” she says.  Gives him a weak smile before turning away.  “I told you I’d try camping and I will.  I’ll just… you know, stay scooched over onto my side.  Like this.”  He watches as she presses her body up against one side of the canvas structure, leaving a scant four inches of bare floor for him to sleep on.

The Doctor’s eyes go wide, knowing for sure that he’s never going to survive the night.


	3. Cold Showers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the plot thickens!

For the life of him, the Doctor cannot remember the last time he was this uncomfortable. 

He has, of course, slept in dodgier locations than this one.  Dirtier ones too.  But never in any of his lifetimes has he been forced to lie so completely still in a place that was even half as cramped and fraught with peril as this tiny little canvas tent in the Pacific Northwest.

The Doctor sighs, tossing and turning as carefully as he can on the little section of floor space he is able to occupy without risking bumping up against Rose’s sleeping form.

But no matter which direction he turns – no matter how he rests his head, or how carefully he positions his legs, or where lays his arms – Rose is _there_.  She sleeps peacefully beside him, completely oblivious to the terror currently gripping his hearts. 

Less than an inch of charged space is all that separates their bodies.  And every square inch of her is warm, and fragrant, and enticing.  Every part of her is perfect. 

May the gods have mercy on his soul.  But he wants her.

The Doctor closes his eyes and sighs for what might be the hundredth time in the past hour. He switches over to his respiratory bypass and forbids his body from further reacting to the situation.  To his dismay, however, none of it helps.  Rose’s sleep is restless tonight, and every so often she fidgets.  As a result, over the course of the past two hours she’s inadvertently brushed up against the Doctor’s chest and his legs countless times.  What’s even worse, on four separate occasions she has accidentally brushed up against the traitorous part of him between his legs that’s completely ignoring his commands to just lie _still_ for god’s sake.

 _A Time Lord you might be, but you’re still alive, and you’re still a man_ , it seems to lecture him with every unconscious press of her warm thigh.  _And Rose Tyler is the only thing you’ve ever wanted this badly._

By midnight, all his attempts at rerouting his blood flow away from his groin have proven completely futile.  The Doctor is, despite his best efforts, now fully hard.  After two hours spent in such close proximity with Rose it’s all he can do to keep from peeling her out of her clothes right here and now. 

“Bugger this,” the Doctor mutters under his breath.  He’s resigned, now, to the fact that sleep is a lost cause tonight.  But at least he can do something to keep himself in check.

He needs a shower, he decides. Badly.  A cold shower, in fact.  And as soon as possible.

No time like the present. 

The Doctor shimmies his way out of the tent, moving as quietly and carefully as he can so as not to disturb Rose.  The night air is cool and bracing, and provides a modicum of relief from the torture of the past several hours.  The Doctor heads towards the TARDIS and his _en suite_ with grim determination, both looking forward to and dreading the frigid shower that’s in his immediate future.

However, when he’s less than three feet away from the time ship he thinks better of this plan.     

Perhaps the TARDIS won’t be willing to help him out of his current predicament.  Perhaps she won’t even let him have the cold shower he needs.  After all, this situation is one entirely of the TARDIS’ own making. There were at least ten different tents in the wardrobe room he could have selected tonight.  The TARDIS could have easily pointed him in the direction of one more appropriate to their situation.    But _no_ : she encouraged him to grab the only tent the Doctor has ever seen that’s actually smaller on the inside.

He isn’t certain why the TARDIS did this to him, but if the gentle laughter he hears emanating from her direction is any clue he thinks he might have some idea.  Either way, he is not about to start substituting her judgment on the matter of Rose Tyler for his own.  And the patronizing tutting she’s doing now that she knows he’s on to her confirms that the old girl is absolutely not going to do him a solid tonight vis-à-vis a cold shower.

His mind made up, the Doctor pivots on his heel and begins walking away from the TARDIS.  He briefly considers taking a quick dunk in the ocean but quickly dismisses the idea.  The shore is several miles from here and he’s in no mood to make that sort of walk in the dark.   A few yards from the campsite, however, he sees a weak flickering light coming from the window of the men’s washroom.  He considers the structure a minute, and then decides whatever sort of showering facilities it might have should do the job well enough. 

When he gets there he opens the door to the squat building.  It protests his intrusion very loudly on aged, rusty hinges.  The Doctor grimaces a little at the noise, and the condition that level of rust suggests the facilities inside might be in.  But he refuses to be deterred, and he enters the room with the sort of determination one usually reserves for battlefields and trips to the dentist.

The Doctor looks around a little, sniffing.  The room is dirty, to be sure.  The shower looks like it hasn’t been used in a year.  Still, though; it’s not as bad as it could have been.  It’s certainly better than whatever additional tricks the TARDIS might have had up her sleeve had he ventured inside his _en suite_ tonight.

Sighing resignedly, the Doctor quickly disrobes and lays his clothes in a neat pile on top of his trench coat.  He fidgets with the knobs on the wall inside the shower and gives a loud yelp of surprise and discomfort when a steady stream of freezing cold water blasts him in the face.

Teeth already chattering from the cold, the Doctor forces himself to think of Slitheen, jello salads – anything and everything that might distract himself from the intoxicating beauty still sleeping peacefully in the warm tent outside.

He screws his eyes shut tight and waits impatiently for his erection to subside.

* * *

 

A few moments later – and unbeknownst to the Doctor – an enormous bear strides confidently into the men’s washroom. 

Its presence would, of course, be enough all on its own to distract the Doctor from further inappropriate thoughts. But the Doctor’s eyes are still closed, and so he see doesn’t it.  Additionally, the horrible rattling noise coming from the showerhead as it does its job completely muffles the quiet snuffling sounds the bear makes as he roots around for food. 

As the bear looks up and considers the showering Time Lord, the Doctor jostles his leg a little.  He counts backwards from one thousand.  And he hopes beyond hope that somehow, he will be able to get this randy incarnation under control before sunrise.


	4. Well-Timed Bears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this, the gripping camping saga ends. Also with this I finally fill Heidi's prompt in its entirety. <3 <3

The Doctor is finally beginning to feel like himself again when he hears a very loud roar coming from less than ten feet away.

Immediately, the quadratic equations he’d been reciting to himself – along with all the other dry subjects he’d been pondering in an attempt to get his traitorous physiology under control – scatter like dust on the wind. 

The Doctor’s eyes snap open, and he nearly slips on the wet tiled floor of the shower when he sees a giant bear eyeing him from the far corner of the room.

 _No,_ he thinks to himself, thunderstruck. _It can’t be!_

“But… but that’s impossible!” he sputters.  “There are no bears in this part of the Olympic Peninsula!”

The bear cocks his head to one side, clearly disagreeing with that assessment.  He begins to move towards the Doctor, growling menacingly.   His smacks his lips, his dripping with slaver, and the Doctor knows this can’t be good. 

The Doctor has seen bears larger than this one before.  On Beveliys 7, for example, in his sixth incarnation, he once saw a bear nearly as large as an armored truck.  But that was a very long time ago and under entirely different circumstances.  The fact of the matter is he’s never been this close to a bear without some sort of barrier separating him from it.  He’s _certainly_ never seen a bear in a dirty old washroom in Washington State while he was stark naked and taking his coldest shower in nearly five hundred years.

“Shoo!” the Doctor shouts, waving his arms.  He vaguely remembers reading somewhere that North American bears are frightened off by loud noises, and so he tries to make as much noise as he can.  It’s a bit of a challenge, of course, given that he’s got nothing to work with but his own appendages.  He claps his hands together, and slaps his thighs with his palms, and shouts at the top of his lungs.  When the bear only continues to look at him with a bemused expression the Doctor, in a last-ditch effort to save himself, turns around and starts banging desperately on the dingy shower wall.

If the bear is at all frightened by any of this he shows no sign of it.  He merely quirks his giant head to the side again, as though trying to work out the solution to a difficult problem.  A moment later he stands up on his hind legs and lets out another roar, this one so loud it rattles the grimy glass window pane up above the Doctor’s head. 

The animal then begins walking slowly, but with deliberate purpose, right towards him.  The Doctor swallows, knowing now that he’s trapped and completely helpless. 

Just as the Doctor’s beginning to hope his next incarnation will be at least half as foxy as this one, Rose – to his immense surprise – comes running into the washroom in the very same pink silky pajamas that drove him out of their tent and into this predicament in the first place. 

She’s got the hard plastic spatula they used to make s’mores in one hand and a small sauce pan in the other.  And an incredibly determined look on her face.

“Get out!” she screams at the bear.  She bangs loudly on the pot with the spatula over and over again like she’s playing some sort of mad drum, shouting and screaming at the animal with a ferocity the Doctor has seldom seen from her before.

It appears to be working.  As Rose approaches the bear he crouches very low to the ground.  Slowly, he begins to back away from her and towards the door.  Emboldened by her success Rose increases the pace of her banging.  The Doctor, figuring he should probably join in, starts shouting bits of nonsense at the thing as he bangs his fists once more against the cold shower wall.

And then, just like that, the bear is gone.

Rose stands staring at the door for a long moment, panting from exertion.  Long wisps of her hair have fallen free of her messy ponytail.  She brushes them away from her face with the back of her hand.

“Oh, Rose,” the Doctor says, so grateful and so proud of her he thinks he might burst.  “That was… you were brilliant.  Just brilliant!”

Rose glances at him and gives him a strange sort of smile.  But she doesn’t say anything.  An attractive sort of blush is creeping across her face and her eyes flit around the room, landing on anything and everything but him.

“Thank you so much, Rose,” he continues.  “But… but what are you doing here?”

Rose considers her fingernails as she answers him.  “Well, Doctor… I heard a loud roar and it woke me up.  I reached for you but you weren’t there and… and then I heard _you_ shouting and making a terrible racket from the exact same direction the roar came from.”  She swallows and glances at him, only to look away again right away.  “I grabbed the first two things I could find outside the tent and ran here as fast as I could.” 

The Doctor’s smile slips a little.  He cannot remember the last time Rose looked as uncomfortable as she does right now.  Something’s bothering her.  Something’s wrong.

“What is it, Rose?” he asks quietly.  “Are you all right”

She nods emphatically.  “Yes,” she says.  “’m fine.”  But her voice sounds strange and she still won’t look at him.

He doesn’t believe she’s fine.  Frowning, the Doctor instinctively walks towards her.  But before he’s made it three steps Rose’s hands fly to her face and she starts giggling like mad.

The Doctor stops in his tracks.  “What?” he asks, utterly nonplussed by her behavior.

The light blush that had been spreading across her face has darkened into a deep shade of red.  “You’re… um.  You’re naked, Doctor.”

The Doctor’s jaw opens and shuts repeatedly like a fish out of water.  In all the excitement with the bear and her rescue he’d completely forgotten he wasn’t wearing any clothes.  He also realizes, for the first time, that he never shut off the water from the shower, either.  He looks down and watches as the cold water from the showerhead puddles in a frigid pool by his feet.

Muttering under his breath, the Doctor quickly turns his back on Rose and twists off the water faucet.  In spite of himself he glances over his shoulder to see what Rose’s reaction to his backside might be. 

But she’s already gone. 

The Doctor sighs, and buries his face in his hands.

He hasn’t often imagined what it might be like, the first time Rose Tyler saw him naked, were such a situation ever to arise.  But on the handful of times he _has_ thought about it it never went quite like this. 

* * *

 

It takes some time for the Doctor to recover his wits enough to properly dry off, dress, and return to the campsite.

He finds Rose sitting outside the tent, waiting for him.  She’s wearing a large terrycloth dressing gown over her pajamas that’s tied loosely around her waist.  She’s holding her marshmallow roasting stick from earlier in both hands, and twirls it absently as she stares off into the distance.

The Doctor sits down hesitantly in the chair next to hers.  To his relief, she doesn’t object to him joining her.

“Doctor?” Rose asks, after a very long moment.

The Doctor looks at her.  “Yeah?”

Another pause.  “I’m glad I was able to save you from that bear.”  She looks up and meets his gaze before continuing.  “Really, I am.  But… um.  I was just wondering… why were you taking a shower in that dirty old washroom in the first place?”  She shakes her head.  “You never take a shower at night.  And besides, if you’d wanted a shower why not do it in the TARDIS?”

The Doctor looks at the ground.  He coughs into his hand, grateful – and not for the first time – that his superior Time Lord biology prevents him from blushing.  “I wanted a cold shower,” he mumbles quietly.

She looks confused.  “What?”

He grabs his own marshmallow roasting stick and draws random patterns with it in the dirt.  “I fancied a colder shower than I thought the TARDIS would give me.”  He shrugs, hoping he looks nonchalant.  Like none of this is a big deal.  “That’s all.”

Rose blinks.  “A cold shower,” she says slowly, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

He nods.  “A cold shower,” he repeats. 

She smirks at him, and then she starts giggling again.  His stomach sinks, and he groans a little, knowing the jig is up.

Confirming his suspicions and his worst fears all in one instant, Rose leans in very close and presses a gentle, lingering kiss to his cheek. 

His eyes slip closed of their own accord.

“Now why on earth would you want to take a cold shower, Doctor?”  Her words are warm little puffs of air against his skin.  But she knows why he wanted that shower.  She _has_ to know why. 

He doesn’t answer her.  In the enfolding silence Rose presses another sweet kiss, and then another, to his cheek.  And then a third, a little lower, to his jaw.

“Rose,” he says, his voice hoarse.

“I wish you’d stayed with me, Doctor.”  Her eyes drift down to his lips, where they linger a long moment before returning, at length, to his eyes.

“I couldn’t stay,” he tells her.  He swallows.  “Because… the tent.  And the… your… your pajamas.”  He closes his eyes, readies himself for the worst of it.  “And because… well.  Because… because.  You.”

“Doctor.” She gently tips his chin up so that he has to look right into his eyes.  “Y’know, I didn’t tell you this earlier.  But I rather _like_ that the TARDIS picked out that tiny tent for us.”

The Doctor stares at her, utterly flabbergasted.  She can’t have just meant what he thinks she meant. 

Can she have?

“Rose –“

She cuts off the rest of the words by closing the short distance between them and pressing her lips to his.

Neither of them say anything else for a very long time.

* * *

 

Hours later, back inside the tent – with Rose lying sleepily in his arms, and with his two hearts still beating so rapidly it feels like they might burst right out of his chest – the Doctor sends a silent thank you to the TARDIS for her assistance.

And another one to the universe for the best-timed bear intrusion in all of recorded history.


End file.
